August 26 marks Women’s Equality, the anniversary of passing of the 19th Amendment, granting American women the right to vote in all public elections.

This super-momentous occasion took place behind closed doors at Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby’s private residence in 1920, “without ceremony of any kind,” according to the New York Times. “Unaccompanied by the taking of movies or other pictures, despite the fact that the National Woman’s Party, or militant branch of the general suffrage movement, had been anxious to be represented by a delegation of women and to have the historic event filmed for public display and permanent record.”

The moment was 72 years in the making, the culmination of a long and ceaseless campaign by American women and their male supporters.

50 years later, congress deemed August 26 “Women’s Equality Day” during the height of the Second Wave Women’s Movement, both as a nod to women’s enfranchisement and to women’s modern efforts toward full equality. To paraphrase, the Joint Resolution was passed because “the women of the United States have been treated as second-class citizens and have not been entitled the full rights and privileges, public or private, legal or institutional, which are available to male citizens of the United States … the women of the United States have united to assure that these rights and privileges are available to all citizens equally regardless of sex.”

This August 26, we raise a glass to voting rights for women, and to the long hard road our forebroads marched to enfranchisement.